Day on Fire Quotes

“My eternal soul, Redeem your promise, In spite of the night alone And the day on fire.”
― James Ramsey Ullman, The Day on Fire

“The truth was not always pleasant. It did not always have good manners and clean its fingernails. Sometimes it was in the eyes of a child or in a bird on a treetop, sometimes in a gutter, on a gallows, in a barracks latrine; and it was no less the truth in one place than in another. The dedication was to find it in all places - everywhere. To face it, know it, and be unafraid. Without evil, there could be no good; without filth, no purity, without hell, no heaven; without Satan, no God.”
― James Ramsey Ullman, Day on Fire

“Derangement - reasoned derangement: that was the key. To break the mould, the chains, the bars that held the flesh and the spirit; to throw off the blinds, the slings, the splints and trusses with which life binds us; to derange and twist and destroy the whole fabric of the prison, and to emerge whole and free. He was not afraid to be free - nor to find his own way to freedom. He was not afraid of "queerness" and "different," of apartness and aloneness, of ranging beyond the bounds which men set for themselves - into a fantasy and hallucination, rapture, and ecstasy. As a voyou (for this was part of it - the seen, the outward) he must pledge himself to the rejection of all forms, all rules and customs, all mindless conformity and acquiescence. And as a voyant he must push on for ever outward, for ever expanding his experience and consciousness; seeing clearly, with fresh eyes; seeing beyond the veils, beyond the shams and effigies, beyond illusion and lie, to the truth. "Yea, verily, verily, I say unto you -" (sayeth God) "- ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
― James Ramsey Ullman, Day on Fire

“I think that deep inside yourself, in your heart, you're a Puritan. Yes, a Puritan. Or an ascetic; a sort of hermit monk. I think you want perfection - of yourself, of everyone - and because you can't find it you turn on it; and on yourself and everyone. Because you hate yourself, you want everyone to hate you. Because you're hurt, because you're proud - oh, so terribly proud, Claude - that's the heart of it. Sometimes I think you're not satisfied to be a human being at all. You want to be more than human: a force, a power, a sort of absolute beyond the rest of us. Like - like Lucifer, almost. Or like God Himself.”
― James Ramsey Ullman, Day on Fire